Nature Is Enough – A Stream of Consciousness Essay

When I’ve analyzed my own experiences, I’ve found that they are seen the way they are because I’ve framed them that way in my mind. When I remove my preconceptions of what I’d like Nature to be, what I find is that Nature is indifferent and impersonal, and I like that.

It means I’m under my own will and direction in how I conduct my life. I’ve found freedom in decision making without the underpinnings of the supernatural. I don’t need to have the supernatural to find meaning and fulfillment. Nature does that for me. Because of its impersonal indifference I can find real meaning in my life. See the real impacts myself and all those around me in our ecosystem have. Real tangible influence that can make or break our existence. Such frail, impermanent existence. And I’m not afraid of that.

I relish what little time I do have and set about flicking the lines of our interconnections to find which ones I should mend or heave apart. Establishing a web of life about myself that will percolate into generations to come.

May my struggles lessen the struggles of those beyond my time. May my brief existence not be remembered by my name, but by my deeds.

I don’t care for fame or love of the populace. I do care about ensuring a brighter future for earthly life. And I say earthly because we are inseparable from other life forms. As much as we often like to think we’re individuals.

The deeper we look into our linkages with the rest of Nature, the more we find that we are not what we think. We are not created by a being greater than the cosmos, but were formed through the convoluted spasms of the cosmos. We are not greater than animals, but are ourselves animals that share our humble single celled organism beginnings with other lifeforms of this planet. We are not even one organism, but a multitude of organisms, without which we would surely perish.

Looking so deeply into Nature can be frightening to our sense of being, but it can also be exhilarating. Sure we may be a conglomerate of organisms that burps its way along in life. But we are deeply connected to everything around us. You can’t sneeze or fart without having influenced some other lifeform, beyond your possibly perturbed human comrades. Even with such often detested mannerisms you are the cosmos expressing itself. As are we all. We may not be as much an entity as we may like to think, but we are no less because of it. I’d argue we are much greater for it.

Life is never just our lives, but the lives of the great many. Sieving through one another, changing one another, just by existing. We often see the land itself as something inert and impassive. Yet all terrestrial plants exist through it, and we exist through the plants and the animals that do too. Without the land, we would be without ourselves. With the land we are here. So we’re not separate from the land. We are very much of the land. So when we speak, it is the land that speaks also. All creatures singing the land’s song. Aren’t we a jolly bunch. Yet our time to sing is short.

Life continues to flitter by along a chain of generations. Some chains are weakened through chance, others through choices. Our human chain has been built strong through choices. But another way a chain weakens is through cutting other chains from connecting to it. That is how our chain is weakening. It lacks the support from the ecological community. My hope is to pull those connections together again and draw on more connections – is it worth it? I think there is more to lose if we don’t try. Its worth fighting for life. Otherwise what’s the point? We exist to exist. We are because we are. When we pass on, what makes up ourselves continues on into cosmos becoming other things, just like how other things that lived before us became other things including ourselves. Its good to encourage that shifting of existence from dead to living and so on cycling through again and again and ever more. So we’re part of death even from the very beginning of life. Even our solar system is formed from the remnants of a previous dead star. We’re all interconnected, and there isn’t even a way out of it in death.